Valentine’s Day. The day of love, or as more people think, a day of wishy washy crap where people need to get away from awful couples and overpriced meals. I had planned to go to a game to avoid seeing some piss poor film on my own such as P.S I Love You, but the decision to what game was made for me by the sensational poster that Sutton United had made for this rearranged game vs Boreham Wood. Sutton had even offered free entry for this game so it was down to South London to avoid the flowers, chocolate and ridiculous public displays of affection to watch some proper football.

(sensational, this is how to publicise a game!)

Sutton is a large suburban town in southwest London. The town was connected to central London by rail in 1847. As part of the suburban growth of London in the 20th Century, Sutton significantly expanded and increased in population before becoming part of Greater London since 1965. Sutton is one of several towns located on a narrow bed of Thanet sands which extends from Croydon to Epsom. Today the town benefits from very low crime by London standards and the presence of several large businesses on the Victorian-era High Street. Other claims to fame include an episode of Mr Bean being filmed in a department store in the town and (back to the Valentine’s Day crap) a match.com advert was filmed at Sutton’s train station.

(Want to come back to mine? No darling, Sutton United are playing tonight)

Sutton United have had a long history stretching over 100 years but are only really remembered for one FA Cup game back in 1989. The club started out playing in local leagues but progressed into the Athenian League in 1921 and while were slow starters, they won their first Athenian League championship in 1928. They carried on this success in the 30s reaching the FA Amateur Cup Semi-Finals in 1929 and 1937. After the war, things started going well for Sutton off the pitch at their Gander Green Lane ground saw the main stand constructed which still stands there today, dominating the ground. Sutton also in 1963 reached the FA Amateur Cup final losing 4-2 to Wimbledon but did reach the Isthmian League in 1967. After an FA Cup tie vs Leeds, Sutton U amazingly won the Anglo Italian Cup in 1979 with a 2-1 win over Chieti before they achieved promotion to the Conference in 1986. Then in 1989 came they most famous moment. In the FA Cup 3rd Round, they welcomed First Division Coventry City and goals from Tony Rains and Matthew Hanlan gave them a shock 2-1 win to become the last team to knock a top league side out of the FA Cup as a non-league side. Recently, Sutton have had time back in the Isthmian League before stepping into the Conference South in 2004/05 after the FA restructured the leagues. After dropping back again, they were promoted last season from the Isthmian League Premier after winning the league quite comfortably.

(Cheerio Coventry!)

This season Sutton United have clearly continued their momentum they picked up from promotion and were going into this game in 5th place, the last play-off position. They had also reached the FA Cup 2nd Round and were live on ESPN as Notts County went away with a fortunate 2-0 win. While Woking look promoted as Champions already, the 4 play-off places are still up for grabs with Sutton under pressure from Weston-super-Mare, Dorchester Town and Dover Athletic so 3 points from this game would put them well on track for the play-off fun in May. Their opponents were lower down the league in 14th and came from North London in the form of Boreham Wood. “The Wood” are 9 points clear of relegation so should be ok this time out from having to play in the Isthmian League themselves next season. The Sutton v Wood derby should have been a double over Christmas, with a 1-1 draw being played out at Wood’s Meadow Park ground on Boxing Day before the New Years Day game being abandoned due to the rain with the score at 1-1. Another blogger, in the form of Mr Peru was at the original game and you can read his thoughts on it here.

The game kicked off with not a sign of rain in the sky and Boreham Wood actually started out the better side as they easily repelled Sutton’s early probing before going back on the attack themselves. BW had the first good chance of the game as a cross came in from a free kick and Charlie O’Loughlin’s header towards goal had to be cleared off the line by Michael Boateng. While Sutton took a while to get going, eventually they did and should have scored after some persistent work by Joel Ledgister, Leroy Griffiths put in a good cross to the far post where Harry Beautyman had an easy header to knock across goal for 1-0. Yet, amazingly he put it wide. BW made the home side pay for that as well on 29 minutes as we went from keystone cops to world class in 20 seconds. A long aimless punt should have been cleared by Simon Downer who not only managed to miss the ball but then give it away to David Bryant. He passed the ball to Billy Lobjoit who in turn found Mario Noto. With his back to goal and nothing really on now as Sutton had got back in numbers, he swiveled and looped a quite ridiculous shot over home keeper Kevin Scriven and into the corner of the net. A new contender for my goal of the season. Sutton equalized quickly though as some passing on the edge of the area found Craig Dundas who fired a shot from 25 yards out. This should have been an easy save for Michael Jordan, even with the slight deflection the shot took, but he completely misjudged it and Sutton had a soft equalizer. The Wood manager even commented after the game, “(He) should not have conceded their opportunist first half goal which he got totally wrong.” Not much else happened in for the rest of the half, so I made my way over to the Main Stand to see the 2nd half from the classic structure.

Boreham Wood played better in this half than their lower midtable position in the league suggests and had several good chances to retake the lead. David Hutton forced a good save from Scriven and then Hutton made an excellent run into the area but the final ball wasn’t there and it was cleared. Sutton were not doing much going forward, although they nearly took the lead through a complete fluke on 70 minutes when Beautyman sliced a cross onto the roof of the net from way out. That seemed to be the signal for them to get going however as they pushed forward in search of the goal that would strengthen their play-off hopes. It nearly arrived on 77 minutes too when sub Kyle Vassell controlled Downer's header from a free kick on his chest before firing in a superb overhead kick that Jordan saved brilliantly to make up for his mistake in the 1st half. While BW had a penalty appeal late on waved away (right decision), as they had been doing most of the pressing in the 2nd half, we saw again what happens more often than not as Sutton snatched a winner. 86 minutes had been played when a corner from Beautyman was only cleared back to him on the edge of the area. He controlled it well before firing a shot through the crowd and in to delight the Sutton fans behind the goal and give the BW fans the feeling of being on a really bad 1st date. They nearly snatched an equalizer in injury time as they launched forward as a cross found Lobjoit for a free header, but it was poor as Scriven easily saved to make sure Wood left empty-handed.

It’s always interesting going to games on Valentine’s evening to see which poor females (or males) have been dragged out and away from the house to see football. There were a few about and they should have enjoyed this game as it was played at a reasonable pace and level. Sutton United should be in the play-off mix at the end of the season and since this game they have continued their good spell as they currently sit in 5th place. Boreham Wood shouldn’t have any relegation fears either as I can see them playing out the rest of the season in midtable. Hopefully Sutton got a good amount of money for their youth development for this game (I believe that what the donations on the gate were going to) as they are a friendly club and have a strong foundation to play at a slightly higher level. I would love to see the terraces and stand move closer to the pitch, but the cost of that will be humongous so can see why it is. I avoided forced romantic crap and saw a decent game of football too. Successful evening.

The rematch. After a brilliant 120 minute slogfest in Derbyshire the week before, nobody wanted to miss this one. And it was the only match on my list for this Saturday to see how this cup tie ended. Down to Sussex then!

Three Bridges is a neighbourhood within the town of Crawley in West Sussex. Three Bridges was a tiny hamlet, which first began to grow with the coming of the London and Brighton Railway in 1841. Despite beliefs to the contrary, the village was not named after rail bridges, but rather for three much older crossings over the streams in the area (River Mole tributaries). The hamlet became the site of an important railway junction in 1848 with the opening of the branch line to Horsham and thence to Portsmouth. The railway established a motive power depot and marshalling yards to the south of the village and a further branch line to East Grinstead was opened in 1855. The village changed radically with the coming of the New town development in the Crawley area in the late 1940s and Three Bridges was one of the first group of neighbourhoods to be built.

Despite being founded in 1901, Three Bridges FC (they started out as Three Bridges and Worth FC) have played all of their history in the Sussex Leagues picking up a trophy or two along the way. 1952 was their first season in the Sussex County Football League where they have played ever since. They were a yo-yo side throughout the 60s by dropping down to the Sussex County 2nd Division but did bounce back to the top flight rather quickly and they haven’t been back there since 1999. The club suffered a disaster in May 1993 when their clubhouse burnt down and threatened the club’s existence. However, they rebuilt the clubhouse and it now takes pride of place down the side of the pitch and also allows Three Bridges to host various County and League Cup finals. On the pitch, they have been steadied in recent years as since 2008 they have finished 6th, 5th, 7th and 5th. This season is a different matter though as they are currently in 5th but have the games in hand over leaders Rye United to overtake them so are considered favourites for their first ever Sussex County 1st Division title. In between the first game at Gresley and this one, they had played a minor cup match (the Brighton Charity Cup) and lost as their B team went down 6-1 to East Preston. The long unbeaten run had well and truly ended, but they were still going strong in the league.

Three Bridges’ Jubilee Field is very different to Gresley’s Moat Ground as large town landscape vs rolling hills is probably the main feature when you look at location. Jubilee Field is also a lot more open and feels more spacious with the lack of stands and cover around the ground. While the main clubhouse has a small bit of cover (picture above), opposite this is the main stand which sits in between the dugouts and next to a really shallow piece of terracing. There is another seated stand plonked in the corner while the rest of the ground is hard standing to give Jubilee Field an open feel, but nonetheless is a decent ground to watch football at. Gresley had also travelled down in large numbers (they probably outnumbered the home fans/neutrals) from Derbyshire as there looked to be a good atmosphere. Just before KO though a group of lager louts arrived at the ground and while at first they got the atmosphere going with some songs, they made their way behind the goal Gresley would be shooting at for the 1st half to “say hello” to Three Bridges goalie Simon Lehkyj. More on them later though.

Gresley started the match where they had left off the previous week in Derbyshire by being well on top as I thought the home side didn’t really look up for it. A strange sight to see considering how big this game was and how happy TB were to get the replay back down in Sussex. Gresley thought they had scored around 10 minutes in when Marc Goodfellow cracked a shot that was flying into the top corner, yet Lehkyj also picked up where he left off and made an outstanding save to tip the ball over the bar. TB only just got a foothold in the game when Gresley roared on by the mob behind the goal won a penalty. Goodfellow tricked and turned into the box when James Grant hacked him down. Clear cut. TB thought the ball had gone out of play, not so clear cut, and so argued the decision for some time. Goodfellow was also lucky to stay on the pitch after an altercation with Grant and he stuck his head in. Players have been sent off for that but he only received a yellow. Royce Turville stepped up, but his weak penalty was easily saved by Lehkyj and TB were let off. Gresley did create another couple of half chances before TB took the lead. A deflected shot found Tim Rivers all alone in the area who coolly passed the ball past Gary Hateley to put the home side 1-0 up after 29 minutes. Just before the game restarted though, it got nasty. The crowd behind the goal had given Lehkyj some abuse (it had overstepped the boundaries of “banter”) and the home goalie unwisely put his finger to his mouth with the shhhhhh as he walked back to goal towards them. Then there were claims he was spat at and the referee stopped kick off taking place as action needed to be taken. Gresley fans through their forum and comments I’ve read elsewhere deny this and I wasn’t behind the goal to confirm eitherway, but it was a shame it had come to this. The TB manager went to talk to them and was promptly told to f off before finally a Gresley official went to talk to them. Police were called also as the game still hadn’t kicked off as I thought at one point the referee would abandon! (what happens then FA!?) The rest of the half was a non-event as both sides played out time as it went to HT.

For the 2nd half I found @GrahamYapp as we watched Gresley come out and continue to play well as the police arrived and the rabble were still giving him abuse. Goodfellow was pulling the strings all across the pitch and his cut back to Jordi Gough should have seen better than a shot skied over the bar. Gresley kept pushing though and Dean Oliver’s shot/lob was again brilliantly saved by Lehkyj, but at a cost. He collapsed in a heap at his goal post as he must have pulled a muscle to keep that out. While the physio came on to help him, the classy bunch behind the goal were still giving him dogs abuse as he stayed on but looked in a lot of pain. No surprise then when Gresley equalised on 63 minutes, but even a fully fit Lehkyj would have struggled with Turville’s brilliantly placed header into the bottom corner from a Goodfellow cross. Lehkyj lasted another 15 minutes before being replaced by Rob Woodward, when he was coming off most of the crowd gave him their appreciation as he had shown a masterclass in goal keeping for around 190 minutes. Even Gresley goalie Hateley came over to shake his hand in a superb touch from the away man. Woodward was called into action before the end as he blocked Hanslow’s shot as Gresley pushed for a late winner. Right in injury time though Gough cleared a header off the line to push us into extra time, again. And again, I wasn’t complaining.

The first half of extra time was quite uneventful in terms of goalscoring chances as I think both sides probably thought it was going to penalties. TB were dealt a blow on 96 minutes however as Grant lunged in for a silly foul and picked up his 2nd yellow. Cheerio. TB didn’t let this bother them and even re-took the lead early in the 2nd half of ET. A ball was floated in and while Hateley stayed firmly on his line, his defence struggled to clear the ball away and TB found Touray at the back post who volleyed into the top corner to amazingly give the home side the lead. Gresley don’t lie down though and with just four minutes of their FA Vase run remaining, they equalised for the 3rd time against TB. When a corner came in, TB fannyed around in clearing it and when they did it arrived to Rob Spencer. He smashed a volley straight through Woodward and put us towards penalties again. The drama wasn’t finished there though as TB had another shot cleared off the line as finally after 240 minutes of pulsating football. This tie would be decided on penalties.

Gresley stepped up first with Goodfellow launching the ball into the roof of the net before TB’s Brake did likewise with his shot. Gough and Rivers also scored before Nottingham and Carden did too to make the pens at 3-3. Neither goalie had looked close to saving one so Lyons and Howard had a fairly easy job of dispatching their spot kicks before Jepson and Donaghey did likewise to take us into sudden death. Langford and O’Hara scored the first round of sudden death to make it 6-6 before Gresley’s Hanslow made it 7-6. By this time Hateley had been getting closer to some of the spot kicks (unlike Woodward) and when Charlie Cooke’s penalty wasn’t well struck, Gresley had finally come out on top after 240 minutes and 14 penalties worth of football. This was a sensational FA Vase tie.

Firstly, the unpleasantries. There has been a fair amount of debate on this on various forums such as the Non-League Matters Forum (see Where Did You Go? for Jan 28th) and the Gresley forum itself. Gresley are saying that these dickheads which almost ruined the match aren’t actually Gresley fans and just turned up on a coach from a pub, probably did. I think I recognised one or two from the home game but once you’ve seen one lager lout, you’ve seen them all. The fact is, the majority of Gresley fans were well behaved on the day and were an asset to their club. Any hoppers who read this and feel they don’t fancy a trip to Gresley because of this, I’d still tell you to go as the welcome I got in Derbyshire a week earlier was exceptional and better than a lot of clubs. It will be interesting to see how Gresley approach this in the future to avoid gaining a “reputation”, especially if they are promoted back to the Evo-Stik League next season.

As for Three Bridges, you’ve made a new fan. A smashing little club that did themselves proud over the two games and I will hope to see more of them in the future and would quite happily come back here for another game. I was wanting to say, come on then Gresley lets go to St Ives together, but as it stands, the original game (tomorrow, as I write this) has been called off and the re-arranged game for 18th Feb, is when I am in Scotland. Oops. Good luck to them against the United Counties side whenever that game is played. (I think they’ll have too much for them) Maybe we’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.

P.S – Graham Yapp’s excellent Modus Hopper Random blog has already got the match report from this on, including more excellent highlights including the penalty shootout! Check it out HERE.

During the Charlton game (remember that?) a work colleague mentioned that he was a Macclesfield Town fan and fancied doing the upcoming away game at AFC Wimbledon. When this was pushed to a cold January midweek fixture due to Macclesfield’s FA Cup run, it was time for a “cold Tuesday evening” in League 2 and seeing what its like to be an away fan at the Wombles.

Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas of common land in London. The residential area is split into two sections known as the "village" and the "town", with the High Street being part of the original medieval village, and the "town" being part of the modern development since the building of the railway station in 1838. Wimbledon has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age when the hill fort on Wimbledon Common is thought to have been constructed. The village over time developed with a stable rural population coexisting alongside nobility and wealthy merchants from the city. In 1838 the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened a station to the south east of the village at the bottom of Wimbledon hill. The location of the station shifted the focus of the town's subsequent growth away from the original village centre. In the second half of the century, Wimbledon experienced a very rapid expansion of its population. From a small base of just under 2,700 residents recorded in the 1851 census, the population grew by 60 per cent each decade up to 1901 increasing fifteenfold in fifty years. During this, time large numbers of villas and terraced houses were built along the roads from the centre towards neighbouring Putney, Merton Park and Raynes Park. During the 1970s and 1980s Wimbledon town centre struggled to compete commercially with the more developed centres at Kingston and Sutton although Square Enix, Unibet and the NHS all have major HQs here to make Wimbledon a reasonable hub of business. (I know AFC Wimbledon are based in Kingston…)

AFC Wimbledon’s history is a controversial subject. Whenever I start in their history, someone will probably moan and say that’s wrong. The story of Wimbledon FC moving to Milton Keynes is one that everyone knows so for ease of writing a paragraph, I’m going to enter from the birth of the “AFC”. The club was founded by supporters of Wimbledon Football Club, led by Kris Stewart, in June 2002. Days earlier, the FA had agreed to allow Wimbledon F.C to relocate 56 miles north to Milton Keynes. The distance involved in this relocation was unprecedented in English football; by moving in such a way, Wimbledon F.C. were cutting all ties with the area of Wimbledon. Starting out in 2002/03 in the Combined Counties League they narrowly missed out on promotion but had an average attendance of over 3,000. More than the new MK Dons. The next few seasons were fantastic for the Dons however as they broke record after record in their relentless promotion quests. The CCL was won in 2004 and then the Isthmian League 1st Division was won in 2005 while they remained unbeaten for 78 league games. While 05/06 saw them fail to gain another promotion, 06/07 was overshadowed by the Jermaine Darlington affair who was ineligible to play and AFC were deducted 3 points in the end. Terry Brown came in as boss and led AFC up to the Conference South for 2008 and then a double promotion as they joined the Blue Square Premier for 2009/10. (As I joined them in Barrow) Last season they completed their exceptional rise back (or joined) to the Football League after beating Luton Town in the play-off final on penalties.

(They are Football League)

This season the Dons had got off to a fantastic start and when they dispatched Morecambe 2-1 at the Globe Arena on 8th Oct, they rode high up in 3rd place. Since then though, they had gone on a winless run in the league of 12 games and slumped down towards the bottom, but a 2-1 win at Port Vale and then a stunning 4-3 win at Gillingham had put them in 15th for this game. With play-offs probably out of the question now (only an almighty run of form now would get them in) closing the season out in mid-table and away from any relegation fears would probably be the target for the Dons. Their ground at Kingsmeadow is essentially a non-league ground but is adequate for League 2 and provides a cosy place to watch football. Macclesfield fans were put into one part of the John Smiths Stand which had a tiny part of cover with a shallow terrace down towards the Kingston Road End. Wimbledon are wanting to move back to Merton and have a 10,000 (?!) capacity ground at some point in the future but that is a long way off. Macclesfield have plodded along nicely in mid-table although their FA Cup form seems to have knocked their league form off as they had lost the last 3 games in the league. As a final point, fair play to the Macc fans as they brought down just over 100 away fans for a cold midweek game, which is about 10x more than I thought there would be.

For the first half, they needn’t have bothered. It was one of the worst 45 minutes of football I had seen. After Luke Moore fired over the bar within a minute, it did look like we’d see some excellent attacking football. Instead we saw 45 minutes of hoofball and midfield stalemate as neither side looked like scoring. Jack Midson had a show that was saved by Jose Veiga and Macclesfield’s George Donnelly fired over after a brilliant run but that was really it. Fair play to AFC Wimbledon’s match report for the 1st half which made it sound actually better than it was. The 2nd half was completely different though, as the Macc Attack came out and dominated early on with AFC’s defence and Seb Brown in goal having to be alert for the increasing pressure Macc were putting on. On 58 minutes, the deadlock was broken as the Dons couldn’t clear the ball properly, despite having many attempts to do so, and as Shaun Brisley dinked the ball back into the area, Dwayne Mattis held off his defender and fired past Seb Brown to give the away side the lead. This woke up the home side and they fired a fantastic equaliser 2 minutes later with a goal that was completely out of character with this dire game. Billy Knott (on loan from Sunderland) received the ball on the edge of the area and fired home a superb strike into the top corner which to nobody’s surprise made BBC’s “Goals of the Week” video. After those 2 minutes of excitement, the game rolled back to its former dire self. The Dons gave the ball away at the back a couple of times but the blunt Macc Attack couldn’t capitalise on it as Wimbledon pushed on in the last few minutes to try and grab a win. They did so with just two minutes left as the Macclesfield’s back line were carved open by Midson and Kiernan to put Sammy Moore through who lifted the ball over Jose Veiga and gave The Dons the win.

This really was a letdown. Thank god for Phil being here as 90 minutes watching this on my own would not have been that great. Both of these sides should easily have enough to stay up but it speaks volumes of how bad League 2 is this season. Kingsmeadow isn’t a bad ground at all but you can tell AFC Wimbledon would like to move out one day and hand (or sell) this back to Isthmian League side Kingstonian. A strong end to the season for them would be the perfect start for 2012/13 and if they were to get promotion to League 1, then who knows! I learnt a valuable lesson from this game, I couldn’t be a Macclesfield Town season ticket holder.